Ever ready Duisburg does it again

As Duisburg prepares for the biggest multisport event held in Germany for over 50 years, the city is cementing its hard-won reputation for reliability and reinvention - with one eye on the summer of '89.

Back then, Duisburg stepped in at absurdly short notice to host the Universiade that nobody else could, despite strong economic headwinds following a decade of industrial decline.

With the Rhine-Ruhr 2025 FISU Games now just a few days away, the man who organised a Universiade in only 153 days has said it all began with a single late night phone call from the most powerful figure in world sport.

The Games maker

“I came home one Sunday in early March and our eldest daughter said, ‘Dad, there was a phone call - something to do with Sammer...?’” Jürgen Gramke, the respected head of the Ruhr Municipal Association at the time, said.

“I asked, ‘What did you say to him?’ and she replied: 'I said you weren't home, and he should call back’.”

Recalling the conversation for an oral history project at the German Sport & Olympia Museum in Cologne, Gramke said two hours passed before the phone rang again. This time, he picked up the receiver to Juan Antonio Samaranch, the longstanding president of the IOC.

“Samaranch said: 'I have something to tell you. We awarded the Universiade to São Paulo, and they’ve now realised at the last minute that they can't manage it. I called Seoul, hoping that parts of the (1988 Olympic Games) organising committee would still be able to act. They said, ‘We have nothing left’. And then I called (Jacques) Chirac in Paris, and he said he couldn't do it at such short notice. Now I'm calling you. What do you say?’”

Gramke requested 48 hours to decide and then frantically began placing his own calls: to NRW Prime Minister Johannes Rau, and to Deutsche Bank CEO Alfred Herrhausen, who himself dialled the federal chancellor, Helmut Kohl. Soon, the economic and political capital was in place, and the Ruhr region was going ‘all-in’ to bring the Universiade to Germany for the first time.

“And then came the next issue,” Gramke remembered. “Where could these Games be held in such a short time? … Where was the strongest administration?”

He approached Dr Richard Klein, the city manager of Duisburg.

“I said, ‘I need about 2,000 people from you. Wherever you can get them. We don't have much time (but) we'll have enough money’.”

The enabler

Klein turned to Heinz-Gerd Janßen, then the deputy head of the Duisburg public relations department. Also recounting his experiences to the German Sport & Olympia Museum, Janßen described the approach as ‘quite strange’.

“My boss came to me and said, ‘Listen, you can't tell anyone about this. There's something going on that I can't talk about – the Universiade.’

“I had never heard of it before, but when I looked it up in the encyclopaedia, I found it had something to do with students and universities. We in Duisburg naturally said, ‘We can't handle the whole Universiade’. There were over 20 sports disciplines. And that's how the idea of a so-called ‘trimmed Universiade’ came about.”

Existing venues were identified for a truncated programme of four sports: athletics, basketball, fencing, and rowing.

“The organisation period was a wonderful time,” Janßen said. “There was no need for much discussion; action had to be taken. Everything was refurbished and made beautiful in no time at all (and) it turned out to be a wonderful event. There were also some well-known athletes there, and the atmosphere was incredible.”

The star

Of the 2,600 student-athletes on show, perhaps the most well-known was Sabine Braun, who had already competed for Germany in heptathlon at the Olympic Games in 1984 and 1988. She still recalls how winning the silver medal at Duisburg 1989 helped to restart her career.

"I didn’t have a particularly good 1988 Olympics (so) winning a medal and being in top form at an international event the following year helped me a lot,” Braun told Rhine-Ruhr 2025.

“Competing in such a big event right on your doorstep, where you sleep at home and you had home advantage, is of course something different. My friends could come, my family was there to support me, and there was just a really relaxed atmosphere at the stadium.”

Braun knows that just like in 1989, the people of the Ruhr region will get behind the FISU Games, particularly at the rebuilt Lohrheidestadion, where her own TV Wattenscheid athletics club is still based.

“They are a special breed of people,” Braun said. “They are very open and honest, sometimes perhaps a little too direct, but rarely mean. So it's all the more fitting that the Ruhr region and Berlin are essentially hosting the Games together.”

Thirty-six years on from its super short notice success, Duisburg and its current mayor Sören Link are ready go one better.

"I am certain our city will once again demonstrate its love for sports, and the people here will welcome the athletes with open arms,” he said. “The Flame Relay has already given us a taste and shown: Duisburg is ready for the Games."

Duisburg is hosting basketball, beach volleyball, rowing and water polo at Rhine-Ruhr 2025. Get your tickets here

Jürgen Gramke and Heinz-Gerd Janßen were talking to Prof. Jürgen Mittag as part of the oral history project ‘Zeitzeugen im Sport- Gedächtnisspeicher zu Menschen im Sport in NRW’ at the German Sport & Olympia Museum

Photos: © FISU